Chapter 410: Pre-season

Private practice of a community psychologist consultation.

Liao Ke smiles as he sends the last patient away for counselling, closes the door, takes off his white coat and hangs it on the back of the door, his smile slowly fades, turns his head towards the back of the clinic and pulls back a blue sanitary curtain.

Behind the curtain is a compartment with a narrow space.

The narrow compartment contains an old trundle bed, no more than 80cm wide, with rust on all four wheels, and piles of debris beside it, hiding the face of the person lying on the frame bed from view.

The man was so quiet, his breathing so faint that he could not be heard, that he lay undetected behind the curtain.

Liao Ke tucked the curtain away as he looked at Lu Yizhan, lying unconscious on the trundle, and let out a long, long sigh.

Lu Yizhan's face is half buried in a pillow, the exposed half of his face is so weak that no blood is visible, his mouth is dry and opaque, his eyes are sunken in, his body is trembling uncontrollably, the quilt covering his shoulders has been turned over by Liao Ke, and blood is still seeping out.

In silence, Liao Ke undressed Lu Yizhan and found that the bandages on his shoulders, which he had changed at noon, were soaked with blood.

The frame bed was too narrow and Lu Yizhan's left hand was hanging out. Liao Ke put Lu Yizhan's left hand back on the bed, then changed the anti-inflammatory drip he was giving Lu Yizhan, put an ice pack on Lu Yizhan's forehead and sat down on the opposite side of the bench with his hands on his knees. Liao Ke let out another sigh of relief.

You can't go to the hospital, you can't go home, you can't let anyone know you're injured, you have to stay in his little clinic and hide your injuries.

As Liao Ke moved Lu Yizhan's shoulder to change the bandage, she said to herself, "Fang Dian never had it so bad when she was captain of a detachment directly against Bai six."

"It's still your own problem Lu Yizhan ......"

Liao Ke looked at Lu Yizhan, who was still frowning in his coma, and sighed: "Why did you have to try to save everyone?"

"You're just one person and it's great to save most people, but even heretics, monsters, even gods - even that Bai Liu you had to try to see if you could go and get him back."

Liao Ke threw the bloodstained bandages into the medical bin, turned his head to find a piece of gauze to wipe the sweat from Lu Yizhan's face, then turned off the clinic lights and watched over Lu Yizhan, who had not yet woken up, in the obscure Buming night, staring lost in thought at an unknown point in the air, and murmuring.

"There is no way for a human being to do so many things, Lu Yizhan ."

"If you don't stop Bai Liu from winning the league this time, even if you don't die now, you will die a horrible death in the future."

" Lu Yizhan, do you know what you are doing or not?"

Lu Yizhan lay on his frame bed, motionless and asleep, not answering him.

Deer Hunter Guild meeting room.

After the game it is customary to play back the footage from the game to analyse the result, but this has now been done.

But now the meeting has finished in the room and only Cen Buming is left sitting at the end of the room.

The lights were not on, the room was dark, only the front screen was glowing, Cen Buming, his eyes obscurely Buming, watched the clip of the Reverse God killing him on the screen over and over again, his hand propped up on the back of his chair, his left hand mindlessly turning the ring on his right hand.

Brother, what exactly did you defect from the Heretical Authority for?

The eight [Inquisitors] led out by Captain Fang Dian were already seven of the failed ones. In more than six hundred rounds of the timeline, these seven Inquisitors were seduced, deceived and tortured by Bai six, again and again, over and over again, and the evil gods enjoyed their pain in a playful way until this pain they could no longer bear.

The seven [Inquisitors] eventually lost the game and surrendered, shedding tears and selling their souls to the Bai six, who in their agony shed tears and became the seven stone statues that the Bai six used to decorate their temple.

Brother, you are the last [inquisitor].

Are you going to follow the same path as the first seven Inquisitors, kneel at the feet of some worldline evil god derivative, sell your soul to him and become one of Bai six's uninteresting ornaments?

I can't believe you've made it this far, brother, you're the only [Inquisitor] to have survived more than 600 games of Bai Bai.

So, brother -

Cen Buming tapped on the system panel and the screen changed to a snowy screen with the [Wandering Circus vs. Russell Cemetery] video in the bottom right corner, he looked at the snowy screen and narrowed his eyes as it reached the end of its projection and the system prompt [Russell Cemetery won the match] popped up on the screen --

--Were you so close to that Bai Liu to set him up to lose the game?

The Temple of Laleje.

In the sound of the endless dark waves, the stone-speckled seer sat on a stone bench with his eyes closed and his head hanging down, opposite the evil god in his hood, idly teasing with his fingertips the seabirds that had landed on the stone table with a low peck on the face of the cards.

The cards on the table were blown around with a grin, but they seemed to be held in place by a magical force and did not fly about.

On the prophet's side there is nothing left, while on the evil god's side there is a thick stack of cards that looks like a never-ending pile, the top one depicting a magnificent retro opera house perched on the sea, similar to the Temple of Lalaye.

"All it takes is one league win for Bai Liu and our game is over, Prophet." The evil god sighed as if with regret, "Unfortunately you no longer have the cards in your hand to stop him from going on to win."

The evil god looked up at the sleeping prophet with a smirk: "Except for yourself."

"But there's just no telling how much your already crippled prophet card will do to stop Bai Liu's doomed victory."

The prophet's head still bowed, the evil god gently raised the beak of the seabird, which flapped its wings in response to his gesture and briefly took to the air, landing on its feet to grasp the prophet's already petrified right shoulder over his shoulder.

The stone sculpture's right shoulder, which had been sturdy after being gripped by the seabird, scattered in spider cracks from the centre as if it had been hit by a bullet from somewhere, and the part of the shoulder where the stone sculpture had fallen apart matched the part of the soul of the Reverse God that had burned away after being hit by the soul-shattering gun.

The seabird threw back its head and hissed, flapping its wings away from the shattered shoulder and disappearing into the dark clouds.

The evil god stretched out his long, slender forefinger and placed it against the forehead of the stone statue opposite, which maintained its human form only on its shoulder, and whispered with downcast eyes.

"The game is not over between us, wake up from your dreams, prophet."

A drop of water drips from the end of the prophet's hair at the side of his neck.

The sea breeze blew strongly from behind his head, blowing the drops of water that were about to drip onto the table far away, and the sea birds hissed from among the clouds, opening their wings as if they could break the only sunlight left that could shine on the temple of Laleje.

The prophet's eyelids saved slightly.

It was as if he had been blown along with the drop into the clouds far, far away, into the sea far, far away, sailing endlessly away in the wind and waves, through more than six hundred dark lines of time, to finally arrive at his destination - where it all began.

--The very first line of the world.

" Lu Yizhan!" Someone was waving at him from a distance, the other blocked at his mouth in the shape of a trumpet to amplify his voice, "The training registration point for the first branch of the Bureau of Heresy Processing is here! You're going the other way!"

He stopped weaving and turned back as the landscape made of time lurched around him and then began to flow wildly in reverse.

The reverse flow of time pulls everything into coloured abstract lines, and Lu Yizhan runs through a tunnel of these lines until everything instantly falls into place beside him and returns to its original form.

He stopped in his tracks.

Lu Yizhan turned his head and he turned almost seventeen or eighteen years old, scratching his head in confusion, "Am I going the other way?"

The man said helplessly, "Of course it's the other way around, that's the second team registration office over there, the first team is over here."

Lu Yizhan glanced curiously back at the registration desk where the second team was lined up, and saw a stern-browed, but youthful-looking boy with a straight back, looking up at the registration desk and reporting with a maturity that didn't match his appearance, "Cen Buming, seventeen years old."

"My ambition is to be on the second team, and when I enter the second team I will assist you in killing all the heretics who are plaguing the area."

Lu Yizhan withdrew his eyes as the man next to him whispered in his ear, "Team Two is a field team, high risk, and those who aspire to Team Two are very murderous, usually children who have been severely persecuted by the heretics, have their families broken and are left on their own, and have been adopted by the Heresy Processing Bureau and placed in training camps to grow up."

"This Cen Buming is probably the same way."

"I still prefer the first team, Lu Yizhan your ambition is also the first team, right?" The man looked at Lu Yizhan and nodded approvingly, "You have good ambitions, the first team is not as dangerous."

Lu Yizhan thought for a moment and asked, "Aren't both Team 1 and Team 2 field teams, and aren't they both dangerous?"

"It's not the same, okay!" The man waved his arms and legs as if he was excited about something, "The captain of team one is super strong! She takes us out on missions that aren't at all as dangerous as they are on Team Two! She has a super strong squad of seven, the highest end of the fighting force in the entire Heresy Handling Bureau-"

"-called [the Army of the Righteous Cross of Judgment]."

The man held his heart with a dreamy face, "If only I could join the Crusaders one day."

Lu Yizhan smiled a little as he patted the man on the shoulder, "We can if we work hard!"

The man instantly fell down in frustration, "How is that possible, ordinary members like us are lucky to squeeze into the first team and go on missions with the Cross Judgement Army."

"Do you want to be in the first team so badly?" Lu Yizhan scratched his head, he smiled indifferently, "I don't have any obsessions, I can go anywhere."

The man glanced at the registration desk of the other detachments and said in a very low voice, " Lu Yizhan, you should go into the first team if you can, I heard from them that the culture of the other teams is not very good, unlike the first team captain who will protect the newcomers, they will bully them."

"Go first team written exams!"

Lu Yizhan nodded but turned his head and forgot about it; he did not take the matter to heart.

It wasn't until after lunch that he was blocked in the alleyway behind the canteen by a group of people with a distinctly depressed look between their brows. Lu Yizhan, who didn't want to cause any trouble, briefly scanned the faces of these people and instantly remembered who they were.

They were among a group of people who were brushed off the written test this morning.

The first team didn't want trainers with bad records on their files, these trainers obviously had more or less a lot of fights and brawls on their files and were upset when they were brushed off, so they went after Lu Yizhan, a man who passed the written exam with high marks.

"That's fine." A man dangling in his pocket had a scornful look at Lu Yizhan from top to bottom, "I can't believe it Lu Yizhan, you're still a schoolteacher."

Lu Yizhan threw his hands up momentarily to show his surrender, not one to get into trouble, and smiled, "Just lucky."

"If you guys just hate me being in the first team, I can change my ambition this afternoon and go to the second team as well."

The group was stunned, and their original aggressive gaze gave a start, as if they didn't expect Lu Yizhan to concede so quickly, but they were not willing to leave like that, so they picked another thorn in their side: "How do I know you'll change?"

"How about this, the captain of the first team is interviewing herself this afternoon, she doesn't like the players smoking and most likely won't let you through if she smells smoke on you."

The group pulled a crumpled cigarette from their pockets and handed it to Lu Yizhan, smiling evilly, "Smoke it and we'll let you go."

Lu Yizhan, who has never smoked, looks down, weighs up smoking this cigarette against spending another fifteen minutes with the group, and readily accepts it, leaning forward naturally towards the man who handed it to him, signalling to Fang Dian to fire.

The other party also subconsciously lit a fire for Lu Yizhan, and only when he had done so did he realise that something was wrong, and was just about to scold him in annoyance, when he noticed that Lu Yizhan was choking and coughing violently.

Lu Yizhan was choking on his cigarette and his eyes were tearing up. He had never smoked before, but he didn't expect it to smell so bad.

I should have known better than to choose smoking.

In the midst of the jeers, Lu Yizhan reached the third puff and could not continue, but the people next to him would not let him go and forced him to smoke.

"Hey, what are you guys doing over there?" A slightly lazy female voice came from the mouth of the alley.

The group moved with a start, Lu Yizhan, cigarette still in the corner of his mouth, narrowed his eyes at the woman standing against the light at the entrance to the alley.

This woman, carrying a heavy sword even taller and stronger than she was, leaning slackly on her shoulders and hips to one side, wearing a high ponytail, was so oppressive just by standing there that Lu Yizhan could smell the blood coming from her as she stood in the alleyway.

One man trembled and shouted, "Team Fang! Yes!"

The sound was like a prologue to a shaking group, which began to shake one after the other, and the woman lazily responded, Good day to you all, and walked in dragging her heavy sword.

When the strong light faded from her face and she could be seen, this Team Fang was already very close to Lu Yizhan, without make-up and wearing a Heretical Authority uniform jacket, her features were very distinguished, but more attractive than her appearance, or rather, her intuition was that she had a strange mix of languor and beauty, as if ready to draw her sword and cut someone down. Aura.

Her gaze swept past Lu Yizhan's choked eyes and the cigarette she had only taken two puffs of at her mouth, and the rest of her eyes swept over to the shivering trainees: "I will consider sending your files to the Third Branch."

--The third detachment was the worst condition of the several detachments.

Most of the trainees didn't dare to breathe a word, but there were some bold ones who raised their hands in defiance and asked, " Team Fang, we were just teaching him to smoke, we didn't break any team rules, why should our files be sent to the three branches!"

Fang Dian laughed a little, leaned sideways against the wall and elbowed Lu Yizhan: "They said they taught you to smoke, is that true?"

Lu Yizhan met the men's malevolent, threatening gaze, and in keeping with the principle that more is better than less, he paused for a moment and conceded, "Yes."

"But I don't think you've learned much about smoking." Fang Dian turned her head sideways, her eyes fell on the cigarette by Lu Yizhan's mouth and she made a gesture that everyone looked silly at, she laughed, "It seems they didn't teach you well enough, I'll teach you myself."

Fang Dian gently drew the cigarette from Lu Yizhan's lips with two fingers, placed it on his lips as everyone stared in awe, took a puff and exhaled slowly.

Lu Yizhan's pupils tighten to a point, his eyes falling firmly on the mouth of the cigarette that Fang Dian has pursed.

"If you want to be taught how to smoke, you should demonstrate it yourself first." Fang Dian held up his cigarette and raised his eyes and said indifferently, "Anyone who still wants to learn in the future, come to me personally and don't bother to teach."

"That's sort of my captain's duty."

"If I ever see anyone else privately forcefully teaching someone to smoke ......" Fang Dian's eyes swept across the room, "I don't mind helping him quit smoking myself."

The group paused stupidly for a moment, then after answering yes, ran off like rats through the streets.

Fang Dian, after lecturing Lu Yizhan, didn't even care that he didn't say a word behind him. He casually shoved the cigarette back into Lu Yizhan's hand, who was so stiff that he didn't move, and walked out of the alleyway with his heavy sword in tow, waving casually at Lu Yizhan behind him as if he didn't even notice it was an ambiguous move.

Lu Yizhan suddenly shouted out, "Team Fang!"

Fang Dian hmmm'd and turned back, "Anything else?"

Lu Yizhan's face was red as he clutched the extinguished cigarette in his hand, took a deep breath to straighten his back and tried to speak clearly, "My name is Lu Yizhan, I am eighteen years old."

"- From the time I was a trainee, the ambition was to be the first team, I was first in the written test this morning and I've always looked up to Team Fang."

Fang Dian smiled a little: "That's good, that's excellent."

"The first detachment welcomes you."